Scientists from the Australian National University claim that for the first time they were able to register the complete absorption of a neutron star by a black hole. This was reported by the university press service.
The discovery was made using detectors that capture gravitational waves. Two scientific institutions participated in the work - the US-based laser-interferometric gravitational-wave observatory LIGO and the Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy.
On August 14, 2019, American and Italian detectors spotted an intense perturbation of space-time at about 8.55 sextillion km from Earth. The space region from which gravitational signals came was also studied using the SkyMapper optical telescope located in western Australia. This telescope did not find anything significant.
Scientists note that black holes are the only space objects that can cause strong gravitational perturbation and at the same time remain invisible to optical and radio telescopes. By the method of exclusion, the researchers concluded that gravitational detectors detected the absorption of a neutron star by a black hole. Currently, researchers continue to collect information about the event, but now they are talking about such an acquisition with great confidence.
“About 900 million years ago, this black hole, like Pacman (the character of a computer game. - RT ), swallowed a very dense neutron star - and it may have faded away instantly,” writes Professor Susan, head of the General Relativity and Data Analysis Group of the Australian National University Scott.
Another scenario suggested by scientists is the absorption of a small black hole of a larger one.
“There is a small but curious possibility that the absorbed object could be a very light black hole, the mass of which was much less than any other black hole that we know about in the Universe,” says Professor Scott.